Green beans are perfectly primal. The reasoning is becuase we eat the POD not just the seeds and the benefits from the pod outweigh the negative affects of the seeds inside. Same with pea pods. You can eat them while podded - at least that's the guidance on the Whole 30 page.

Oh boo, here I thought I was making the good choice doing hard cider. I guess I assumed the sugars were more from apples than "sugar," but sugar is sugar in the end. Tequila it is then!

Today was great, and I must say it's incredible how much my mood changes when I eat right. Previously I was always super mood swingy. Not to the point where it was noticeable to others, more just a lot more days of feeling depressed. I'm sure a lot of things factor into this, but I can't help but think my increased meat consumption and decreased crap consumption is a huge part.

I can't describe how good dinner was. We used Roast Beef With Thyme, Garlic And Red Wine | Paleo Diet Lifestyle this recipe, and while the flavoring on the meat was more the grass-fed delicious I roasted the brussel sprouts in the beef juice liquid and oh-my-yum it was heavenly. I can eat brussel sprouts by the pound. Shyum.

I ate chocolate again, and not sure why I'm making the exception when I said I wouldn't, but I'm still feeling good so I'm not going to beat myself up for it.

Tomorrow I work a double at the restaurant. I am planning on preventative eating - big ass breakfast (per uj) and then I'm going to pack some left over roast beef to nosh on around 4ish. Will probably eat something at the restaurant and am hoping it is kosher for me.

My mood is a thousand times better when I am taking care of my self and eating right. I have wasted too many days being short-tempered and pissy. Many days I have just wished I could stay in bed all day...not much fun for my little girl!

I'm glad you not beating yourself up about the chocolate. There are very few people who are perfect and follow primal to the tee. Wiggle room is good, just not too much

Primalmontana - spot on on the mood stuff! I'm pretty sure people at my restaurant hate me because I'm so freaking perky. Everyone there just walks around with a scowl on their face
Anyways, yesterday was a long day. Pretty much constantly on my feet from 8:30 am until 11:00 pm. YIKES. Anyways, eating for yesterday was as follows

B: BP Coffee, 3 eggs fried over roast beef and kale sautee
3:15: coffee with half and half (all they had at starbucks on my break)
4:00: cue me shoving down 2 hardboiled eggs and leftover roast beef in the bathroom. I knew if I did this anywhere else I would just be judged and I wasn't in the mood to have to defend myself. Also had a few bites of the special which was raw yellowfin tuna with a rock shrimp and olive oil tapenade. Yum.
11:00: finished off a few slices of roast beef, 2 tequila/soda waters
1:00: a banana with two spoonfuls of almond butter. Desperate late night snack, I was famished!

All in all pretty good I think. Avoided all the nasty crap they served us at the restaurant (although they made this chicken alfredo pasta at dinner that smelled pretty epic).

Random thoughts I find interesting and no one else probably does:
On Friday morning at premeal we all got on the topic of diet. Bad topic to get on in my opinion, and here's why. So one guy has recently decided to go veg, and he gets very defensive of it because as a testosterone dominated restaurant he gets a lot of crap for it from the other guys. Anyways, we start talking about organic, whether we should eat meat, how messed up the food industry is, and I mention my meat CSA and awesomeness so excited YUM. He goes off on a rant about how we can't feed the world on organic and grass fed and that not everyone in the world can "have a farm in their backyard and the luxury of being able to afford grassfed meat." Um...that felt a little targeted...and ouch.

First of all, m opinion is that we have seriously f*ed up priorities, and the majority of us absolutely could afford better quality produce and consciously raised meat. We spend hundreds of dollars on the highest quality electronics, why the hell don't we do the same for the stuff that actually effects our well-being. I can't tell you how heartbreaking it was in Guatemala to walk into dirt floor shacks with starving, swollen belly children watching flat screen tvs. Really folks, let's shift our mindsight a little and we'll see that the good stuff may require a bit of a sacrifice but is totally doable.

SECOND of all I wanted to go off into a semi-lecture (although I'm not the lecturing type) about the need to focus on conscienciously raised and cultivated meat and produce to turn it mainstream, and the only reason that it's so much more expensive is because the conventional farming industry is so heavily subsidized by government. So yea, we still pay a ridiculous amount for our food, it's just hidden under the title of "taxes" and is still awful for us.

THIRD I wanted to whip out The Primal Blueprint and highlight all the evidence against what this guy is saying - the fact that adopting a vegetarian lifestyle is actually less sustainable than eating meat, that the destruction it does to our environment is far more than our environment will be able to tolerate for very long, and that maybe if we stopped breeding like bunnies on crack it would not be as much of an issue.

Anyways, let's be honest, nobody would've listened. We have a serious disadvantage in that CW is so well known that people without ever really reading anything or being informed on it have these catch phrases like "can't feed the world" and "only for the elite who can afford it" and "SATURATED FAT!" And "cholesterol!" and "Diabetes!" and "heartdisease!" You get the picture. So they throw out any of these and everyone in the room nods along in agreement and OH YEA Great point you'll get cancer and die! Without actually being informed or really"knowing" anything, just mindlessly repeating what Dr. Oz's latest wisdom is on the topic at hand. So, it's hard to have quick discussions with people when it requires actually explanation and data on our part.

Here's my tentative plan. Bring in the Vegetarian Myth, leave it on a booth, find it and claim it as "I think a customer left this behind," have it linger at the host stand for a while until it garners some people's curiosity and they pick it up and read, and covertly (without anyone knowing) convert everyone into PBers. Great idea, wish me luck.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that two recent vegetarian/vegan converts (this guy at the restaurant included) said to me: "I'm surprised, I've expected the weight to melt off and it just hasn't." Restaurant guy said he actually GAINED two pounds. <insert evil cackle>

So, the worst days (in my opinion) are the ones in which I forget what I've eaten because it's been a whole day of noshing. That's usually when I'm at the restaurant for a long time.

7:00 - BAB & BP Coffee
9:30 - OJ (probs 6 - 8 oz) and 2 pieces of bacon
10:30 - Cappuccino (2% milk because it makes better foam...and we have a new cappuccino machine which makes AWESOME FOAM. Oh the things I get excited about)
3:30 - a few more pieces of bacon along with Sunday Hash - basically the guys in the kitchen throw together all the leftovers from brunch. Combo of many hashbrowns, sausage, eggs, ham, bacon, spinach, queso fresco, and whatever else they have. I ate more than I would've liked to because after 8 hours there I was just dead and felt like I needed the fuel (although I probably didn't, I needed water)
6:30 - a little bit of GF Roast Chicken, some green beans, and half of my salad because I was too full to finish
8:30 - 2 squares of 85% dark chocolate, some yogi tea, then had a small bowl of greek yogurt, strawberries and walnuts

The issue is the frequency of feeding. I like being able to write down three, succinct meals a day, not all this in between crap, but when I'm groggy at the restaurant I just reach for whatever meat in sight.

granted, most of this is still primal, I definitely did not need the yogurt at the end of the night, it was more "my legs are exhausted and I want to go to sleep but game of thrones is still on so I will eat." I think rather than limiting foods my biggest challenge is learning how to eat only when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full. Actually confronted my mom on this last night as she always guilt trips me into finishing off whatever veggie or meat is on the table as it "won't save well." Got a little upset with her, trying to explain how I'm trying to learn to read my body's signals and not overeat. The biggest issue is that once I leave the house in the morning I'm usually gone for 6+ hours, so if I don't eat there's no food for a while and I desperately need that energy. I guess this is the perfect opportunity to try a fast? Tomorrow I get to come home for lunch around noon, so maybe I will try it then.

Hi..for me,and only for me,the best thing I do is have a protein laden breakfast..it usually consists of eggs,spinach,some cream and some other bit of meat lamb,bacon,minced beef..whatever..if I need to eat again (this is at 7am),I usually don't eat until 3 pm and often times I can stretch it to 5-6pm.
I work in catering as well and I know how easy it is to just grab something and go..have some water instead as hunger is often times just being dehydrated and this is especially true when you run around like mad in a busy restaurant.

OMG I love your post about food and mainstream and your silent-in-your-head backlash at vegetarian boy. I LOVE IT and I have to say that I am 100% in the same boat as you in regard to defending my choice to follow primal, why I think it's better, etc, etc, etc. It's so much easier to just ignore the discussions and let the results speak for themselves, ya know?

My sister is doing "no-fat, no-carb". Yeah... that's what I thought too. I asked her "How do you plan to get protein without fat?" her answer "ok. low fat then." She has no idea what she's talking about. I asked her if this "diet" was something she felt she could reasonably do for the rest of her life without disrupting it or going on carb binges. I got no response (conversation was had via text). She says she's lost 10 lbs in her short week on it, which completely dwarfs my 10 lbs in 60 days on Primal, unless you consider the facts of where this weight loss likely came from - hers: water, possibly muscle mass; mine: fat. I'll take my long slow loss of pure fat and she can keep her crappy whatever-diet. lol

I feel like I belong to a small clique of people and anyone "outside" the circle is unwelcome unless they're willing to be a convert... almost like a cult... but I will not drink the Kool-Aid. lol

AH! It totally is a cult and sometimes I judge myself when I heard myself trying to convert others, but then I sit down to my morning breakfast of buttered coffee, steak and eggs and I care less that people want to vomit at my food choices and all that fat. The other day I scarfed down hard boiled eggs and leftover roast beef in the bathroom at work to avoid eating premeal and to avoid the weird stares from all my "health conscious" coworkers.

Anyways, yesterday was weird again. I am so so so so EXHAUSTED (or, I was until I slept last night) because it's been pretty much 5 days of nonstop, and yesterday was a murderous day at the farm followed by 5 long hours at the restaurant.

So, yesterday

6:30 - BAB and BP coffee
3:00 - 10 minutes to get ready and leave for the restaurant, so I scarfed down a bunch of kale with leftover chicken and tons of butter, than had a banana and almond butter (damn fruit, not sure why this is creeping back in, after living in Guate and seeing the damage bananas have down to the world I am SO anti banana, but it looked good), and a square of dark chocolate as I walked out the door
4:30 - some ham at work (taken off the bread), a few bites of the sashimi tuna special, some asian pear puree, wasabi bur blanc, and lychee sauce. So yum. Avoided the black rice noodles, win. Also had some coffee with whole milk. I would not have lasted the night otherwise
10:30 - was starving so had some greek yogurt with strawberries and walnuts, a square of dark chocolate, and a spoonful of almond butter.

I'm not quite adhering to my super strict goals, but to be honest the things I'm not considering quasi binges (yogurt, strawberries, banana, almond butter) are really not that bad. I need to get better at slowing down and just eating when I'm hungry, not when it's in front of me and technically primal.

Also, yesterday was an insanity work day. We seem to be dealing with that obnoxious New England weather - one day of sunshine per 7 days of rain - so we have literally 9 hours to get all the plants in, and then I had to go to work. So, my food choices were semi warranted I think because I expended so much goddamn energy. Also biked to and from the restaurant (35 minutes each way) and really thought I was going to fall over and collapse on the way home. My legs are starting to look good though

Bonded with a guest last night about being gluten free, although he started telling me about all the "Gluten free" product line whole foods have. End common ground. I just said "oh I'll have to try that! Enjoy your pork chop!"

I also must say that my favorite part of the day is turning into this - the half hour where I eat my big ass breakfast, sip my buttery brew, and update MDA. Love you all for the support!

Edit: Forgot to mention! I avoided cookies yesterday, which is OH SO HUGE for me and I thought I deserved a primal community pat on the back. The convenient store across the street from my restaurant makes the BEST cookies on the planet. They are huge, and they recently started doing peanut butter cookies with melted ressees in them. Yea, I know. Anyways, had offers from TWO Different people yesterday and passed on both. Challengingly, and I looked in the bags a few times before reassuring myself that there was not enough chocolate in them to warrant the cheat. It also helps that I've told everyone I'm gluten free, so they know not to offer me that stuff for the most part. Yay!

My mom committed the ultimate Primal sin the other day - brought peanut butter cookie to the races for my kids. I love peanut butter cookies. I was strong enough to avoid them. Congratulations to you for avoiding the cookies! That takes power.